The Two Earlier Awards by a Chamber

2 THE TWO EARLIER AWARDS BY A CHAMBER Dual nationality1 is a status possessed by a significant and now increasing number of individuals all over the globe.2 Traditionally, it has been strongly discouraged. It has been said, for example, that the United States would as soon tolerate a man with two wives as a man with two countries; as soon bear with polygamy as that state of double allegiance which common sense so repudiates that it has not even coined a word to express it.3 1 ‘Dual nationality’ and ‘dual citizenship’ are often used interchangeably, though under certain national laws, including the United States law, there exists a technical distinction between a ‘national’ and a ‘citizen’. Where the distinction is observed, every citizen is also a national and enjoys full measure of political rights, but the reverse is not always the case, for there may be non-citizen nationals not entitled to certain rights, such as the right to vote or to move freely to all parts of the national territory. No such distinction is made under the Iranian law, nor is the distinction recognized on the international plane. Since the present work is mainly concerned with the international aspects of the topic, the internationally recognized term of ‘national’ may be more accurately used. 2 For two in-depth and recent studies of the subject, see: D.A. Martin and K. Hailbronner (eds.), RIGHTS AND DUTIES OF DUAL NATIONALS: EVOLUTION AND PROSPECTS, The Hague/ London/New York: Kluwer Law International, 2003; T.A. Aleinikoff and D. Klusmeyer (eds.), FROM MIGRANTS TO CITIZENS: MEMBERSHIP IN A CHANGING WORLD, Washington D.C: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2000. In the latter, it is estimated, for instance, that now some ‘five million’ Australians, ‘millions’ of Americans, and ‘several millions’ of Western Europeans, are dual nationals. (at 478) 3 George Bancroft, the United States diplomat who negotiated the Bancroft treaties on nationality issues with European powers, in a letter dated 26 January 1845 to Lord Palmerston, the then British foreign secretary. The letter is reprinted in Sen. Ex. Doc. 38, 36th Cong., 1st Sess. 164 (1860), and quoted in D.A. Martin, New Rules on Dual Nationality for a Democratizing Globe: Between Rejection and Embrace, 14 Georgetown Immigration L. J. (1999), 1, at footnote 24. For a similarly strong but more recent view, see G.A. GEYER, AMERICANS NO MORE: THE DEATH OF CITIZENSHIP, 1st Ed., New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1996, at 68, 312. 16 The Two Earlier Awards by a Chamber A much more moderate language is employed in the Preamble to the Hague Convention of 1930, which nevertheless finds it ‘in the general interest of the international community to secure that all its members should recognize that every person should have a nationality and should have one nationality only’.4 Those who find dual or multiple nationality undesirable mainly refer to the resultant divided loyalties, divided identities, and divided national interests. They also point out to the practical difficulties it normally brings about, in relation particularly to diplomatic protection, taxation, military service, civil status, and the like. Others, especially in recent years, have suggested that although dual nationality is not ‘a virtue in itself’, and should not therefore be proliferated in the absence of genuine links between the individual and his States of nationality, it is a fact of modern life and as such cannot be ignored. They refer in particular to globaliza- tion, rejection of discrimination against women, the end of the Cold War, and the ever-increasing cross-national commerce, contacts, and marriages as major factors contributing to the expansion of the incidence of plural nationality. The focus of the international system, they suggest, should now shift from rejecting this phenomenon toward regulating its objectionable aspects.5 2.1 The Legal Setting Turning now to its legal aspects, dual nationality results, at times, from the operation of the two rules of jus sanguinis6 and jus soli7 in respect of a single person, and, at other times, from an individual marrying another with a different nationality, where the laws involved bestow a new nationality without requiring the loss of the original one. It also comes about when an individual is naturalized by his adopted country, but retains the nationality of his native country, either deliberately or because of the refusal of the native country to release him automatically from his original nationality upon naturalization. Any of these cases may in fact come about as a result of the combined operation of the laws of Iran and of the United 4 ‘The Convention Concerning Certain Questions Relating to the Conflict of Nationality Laws’, opened for signature April 12, 1930, 179 L.T.S. 89. 5 For an exhaustive review of the arguments of the ‘endorsers’ and the ‘oppositionists’ of dual nationality, see D.A. Martin, footnote 3 above, at 4-21. 6 Nationality based on blood relationship (literally, ‘right of blood’). Historically, this was the rule of the civil law countries in Europe. 7 Nationality based on the place of birth (literally, ‘right of the soil’). Historically, this was a tenet of the common law of England..

Load more